From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 2 01:59:58 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE38216A4DA for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:59:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com (nf-out-0910.google.com [64.233.182.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1873243D80 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:59:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id n29so474970nfc for ; Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:59:13 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=tTj4gSvT1mI67jl516xO5j8Vq7RBtpTifKaSXWxbfIrfkzDOR26NQUJgPDjkSZ9LO9o4IS7huRkjVIp7CaXbmqWua41TffMTEnWYPhhff4MFc0Kr8jVYjN+ejr5TkJu+9E25tiRprOMXX3Fo210xGRdD9EcUqU12FrDOfwTicgw= Received: by 10.78.127.6 with SMTP id z6mr120857huc; Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:59:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.78.143.11 with HTTP; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 18:59:12 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 20:59:12 -0500 From: "Nikolas Britton" To: "User Freebsd" In-Reply-To: <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44CDE02F.4090604@dial.pipex.com> <44CE7DD0.9070902@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> <871ws1v261.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801120058.O27679@ganymede.hub.org> <17615.30414.314802.792740@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> Cc: Robert Huff , Xiao-Yong Jin , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:59:59 -0000 On 8/1/06, User Freebsd wrote: > On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote: > > > On 8/1/06, Robert Huff wrote: > >> User Freebsd writes: > >> > Actually, using ifconfig wouldn't work ... it would give unique, but as > >> > soon as you add another IP (ie. alias), the ID would change ... you'd > >> need > >> > to do something like: > >> > > >> > ifconfig | grep ether | sha256 | md5 > >> > > >> > since the 'ether' would never change ... > >> > >> At least some cards (+ FreeBSD drivers) allow you to set the > >> MAC address .... > >> > >> > >> > > > > You still don't get it! Maybe this simple perl program will illustrate > > the problem: > > > > my $number = "100000000000000000000"; > > my $randomkey = ""; > > while (0 == 0) { > > $randomkey = `echo $number | md5`; > > print "fetch http://www.hub.org/freebsd_stats.php?HOSTID=$randomkey"; > > $number++ > > } > > > > Also by using only the mac address output of ifconfig you have limited > > the pool of unique keys to 16^12 (281,474,976,710,656)!!! All I need > > to do to find your mac address is compute all possible mac address > > combinations into MD5 and then just simply match it up with yours. > > Anonymity only works if the input is large then the output!!! Because > > it's computationally impossible to compute all values of a 500+ byte > > string etc. etc. The MD5 string maps back to at least (how do you > > compute the collisions?) two SHA256 keys and the SHA256 maps back to > > at least two ifconfig strings. > > Thing is, we aren't so much looking for anonymity as we are uniqueness, > but, wouldn't the CPU serial id not be both? > > Ok.. lets start from the top, again. Why do we need uniqueness? -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/